I recently purchased this Mach to participate in the Sandhills Open Road Challenge (SORC) in Nebraska. It’s a 55 mile road race. I’m planning on adding a few things to the car as it has some nice modifications already. I’m interested in hearing from the previous owner as I’d like to know if there has been anything done to it that I may be missing.
Car seems to have living in Vegas, Montgomery Alabama and Kingman Arizona
Modifications currently done:
Kooks stainless headers/X pipe (no cats)
Borla stainless exhaust
K&N intake
MGW short throw shifter
SVT Cobra wheels
AEM A:F gauge (kinda works sometimes)

Would the 4.30s be too low? Iíve read quite a bit and it seems to be the gear of choice for the Mach 1 given the pretty high redline.
For those unfamiliar with the SORC you should really check it out. Pretty unique event with awesome cars from all over the country. The course has some curves and hills. Lots of straights. Competing in the 90mph class means whoever averages closest to 90 wins. Max of 120 on the straights. Iíve never owned a car before (slow diesel pickups and fast motorcycles) so Iím certainly open to input. I figured the 4.30s would leave it in a good part of the powerband around 90mph in 4th.

Considering leaving the stock setup. Iím a little hesitant to mess with the geometry too much given the rate of speed involved and my inexperience with such things. I figure the ford engineers know better than I do. Iím certainly open to suggestions. I donít really want to lower the car much as the long tube headers bottom out on occasion already

You should be ok except for top speed in a mile...I have a set of road course rotors and brake padsused once for a 3 25 min session at Roebling rd in Ga...Raybestos ST-47, came from a race shop in NC. Read up on them and make an offerm.NOT for the street and don't faint at the price...I was out braking vettes, any pretry much everyone, will never use again and sitting in a cooler.

Welcome to the Reg. If you are not comfortable setting the car up but still want it to go faster around a corner, contact maximum motorsports, kenny brown or steeda. They are the leaders of road racing mustang suspension and can help you do it correctly the first time. Factory Mach 1 suspension is aimed more towards 1/4 mile performance and will be severely lacking in a road race environment.

You never want to get to the point where you have to go into 5th gear. 4.30's might make you have to lift the accelerator on those really long straights. Those TR3650's are really geared more toward the 1/4 as well. That first gear is granny-low, like 3.30+something. If you have 4.30's and ever need to drop it in 1st on a super tight curve, it would suck IMO. I'm certainly no expert, but I would think 3.73's would be low enough to make 2nd gear useful for those situations. I would definitely see how it does with the stock gears before doing anything, though.